The sky is again threatening to crash in on the Big 12 Conference. According to hypocrites, it’s all Bevo’s fault.

Bevo is Texas’ mascot and the name behind the new Longhorn Network. ESPN’s brainchild is set to debut next month, giving eager fans nonstop coverage of everything from football to women’s cross country to Mack Brown shaving in the morning.

It’s also giving other conference members the heebie-jeebies.

They are grousing about how the network will be an unfair advantage. Texas A&M and Oklahoma are floating rumors they might bolt to the SEC if something isn’t done to rein in Bevo.

After the Texas A&M Board of Regents met Thursday, school president R. Bowen Loftin emerged to express grave concern over the Longhorn Network televising high school games and unduly influencing young studs to sign with Texas.

“If we have an unequal playing field for various schools, that we think is a problem,” he said. “That creates uncertainty.”

The official school position: Unequal playing fields are a problem if we’re not equal. Otherwise, they’re just dandy.

This whole crisis sprang from the deal conjured up to save the Big 12 last summer. Nebraska and Colorado bolted and Texas was threatening to join the Pac 10.

That conference wouldn’t allow the Longhorns to start their own network. The Big 12 would, and commissioner Dan Beebe negotiated a sweet new contract with Fox.

It will pay Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma $20 million a year. The other seven conference members will get $14 to $17 million.

The Big Three also got to split about $20 million in buyout fees from Colorado and Nebraska. Baylor and the rest of the Big 12 got approximately squat.

Not quite, but A&M and Oklahoma were the beneficiaries. Now they’re saying the Longhorn Network epitomizes everything wrong with college football -- greed, self-interest, recruiting overkill.

There’s something to that, but what would you do if you were Texas?

The league gave you its blessing to start a network. Along came ESPN waving a $300 million contract over 20 years. It will televise minor sports, coach’s shows, pep rallies, tailgating and generally be a 24-hour infomercial for Bevo.

It also plans to show one to three football games a year, along with 18 high school games. That’s what got the sabers rattling, especially after an ESPN honcho told an Austin radio station the Longhorn Network would target top recruits for good old UT. Those plans are now on hold as Texas officials try to calm fears.

“We don’t want to use it as a recruiting advantage,” athletic director DeLoss Dodds said.

He spent the week assuring Big 12 members that it will be mere coincidence if a Longhorn Network satellite truck parks across the street from the home of a five-star recruit. However that issue is resolved, the Longhorn Network will only make the richest athletic department in America richer.

So is that wrong?

Not if you’re a capitalist who believes in equal opportunity. Should Texas be penalized for making itself the top school in one of the nation’s largest, most football-crazed states?

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It’s unfair to Texas Tech that the school in Austin has more money, fans and panache. So those advantages should be muted and wealth redistributed.

Sports leagues wouldn’t exist if there weren’t some socialist sharing, and Texas goes along with that. But if you advocate fairness, how is it fair to tell any school it can’t be all it can be?

What was Texas supposed to do, tell ESPN to give its $300 million to Kansas State? No disrespect to the Wildcats, but ESPN wouldn’t have been interested for one simple reason.

They’re not Texas.

And remember, it’s a free market. Oklahoma could start a Sooners Network or Texas A&M could crank up an Aggies Network. Neither would have the viewers or revenue of the Longhorns Network, but is that Texas’ fault?

Oklahoma and Texas A&M willingly signed onto the plan that created this Longhorn Network monster. The Big 12 knew the only thing worse than living with Texas was living without it.

Now the league’s future is again in doubt, what with all the uncertainty in the air.

There is one certainty in all this, of course. If the other schools were in Bevo’s position, they’d be doing the exact same thing.